So yeah, I can’t believe you didn’t know about this
it were that time I were told Stacey Butler called me a slag and I said like you know what I’ll show her who’s a slag so I went to the corner shop and got meself a bottle of Yazoo the banana flavoured one and stole a condom outta my dad’s sock drawer and when we were on the school bus next day I opened that greasy little packet gave the rubber a little blow and poured the milkshake inside as it’s the perfect colour right? and then when Stace weren’t looking I draped the johnny over her bag and when she got up all the boys started sniggering and I was like someone must have had a good night and she span in circles looking for what everyone was laughing at and when she touched it she screamed like she’d just stepped on a slug with no shoes on and it was so fucking funny, so yeah like she never called me a slag again.
The Ballad of St. Anthony
There’s a lady who always gets on at my stop
with a gentleman who is not
she wears a worn fur coat
little else
we are tired after a day at work
hers is just beginning.
The train undulates beneath us
we are riding different waves
I always smile at her
it is what lips were made for
today they are arguing
she is silent. He growls at her.
He points at the gold-plated hoops
tugging at her earlobes
the fake Louis Vuitton bag
he owns her
everything inside and out
except for today.
Without warning she strips
inch by delicious inch
this is not a tease
it is a provocation
by the time we pull into Vauxhall
she is naked.
He never owned one spec of her
she skips from the carriage
lighter than before
deaf to his screams
presses red red lips to the window
leaves us both
one smile up
one smile down.
Aries
horizon dribbles
slugs of dying light
nature by design
is cruel
the ram stares
in shade it remembers
when horn pierced
young shepherd’s flesh
now serpentine
keratin growth from
stubbornness of skull
sleeks towards popped
eyeball closer
closer
every blink a massacre
of bullish hours
I could help
cut and saw and peel
away homegrown guillotine
that bullet that knife
the ram stares
in shade it sees
my shadow grow distant
alongside its own
Zoë Davis is a writer from Sheffield, England. She writes poetry and prose, and especially enjoys exploring the interaction between the fantastical and the mundane, with a deeply personal edge to her work. Her favourite historical squabble has to be “The Pig War” of 1859: a “bloodless” boundary dispute between the United States and Great Britain over the San Juan Islands, sparked when an American farmer shot a British-owned pig who had invaded his turf. Despite a massive military standoff involving warships and hundreds of soldiers, the only casualty of the entire war was the pig itself. You can follow Zoë over on X @MeanerHarker. Do feel free to come and say hi!
